(english / deutsch / francais / italiano)

Harold Pinter, a friend of Yugoslavia

1. LINKS: the Nobel Prize speech
2. Some 1999 texts about NATO aggression against Yugoslavia


=== 1 ===

--- ITALIANO

Il Premio Nobel a Harold Pinter: il discorso di accettazione
Fonte: Garzanti Libri
http://www.garzantilibri.it/default.php?page=news&NEWSID=432

l'Unità online-Il discorso di Pinter al Nobel...
http://www.unita.it/index.asp?SEZIONE_COD=HP&TOPIC_TIPO=&topic_id=46182

H. Pinter Premio Nobel “Resistente” e antimperialista
http://www.resistenze.org/sito/te/cu/po/cupo5l18.htm

Si veda anche:
[icdsm-italia] Harold Pinter, amico della Jugoslavia, Premio Nobel...
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/message/4592
ed i link ivi indicati

--- FRANCAIS

Harold Pinter - Discours de réception du Prix Nobel
Art, vérité et politique. Le grand écrivain pourfend les crimes de Bush
et Blair

http://www.michelcollon.info/articles.php?dateaccess=2005-12-
12%2013:17:58&log=invites

--- DEUTSCH

Nobelpreis-Rede: Harold Pinter attackiert die USA
Invasion im Irak sei ein "Akt von unverhohlenem Staatsterrorismus",
100.000 Tote für Bush und Blair eine "bedeutungslose Lappalie"
Kompletter Redetext: Nobelvorlesung - 7. Dezember 2005

http://www.svenskaakademien.se/litiuminformation/site/
page.asp?Page=3&IncPage=1082&Destination=158
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-g.html

--- ENGLISH

Art, Truth and Politics
(Harold Pinter)

This is the text of the lecture to be given by Harold Pinter when he
receives the 2005 Nobel Prize for literature on Saturday. Forbidden by
doctors from going to Stockholm to receive the £720,000 prize, the
ailing playwright and poet has delivered his speech by video. (...) The
invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism,
demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law.
The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of
lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the
public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic
control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other
justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation. A
formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and
mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people...

http://www.uruknet.info/?s1=1&p=18526&s2=09

Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize speech: a brave artist speaks the truth
about US imperialism
(Barry Grey, WSWS)

British playwright Harold Pinter, this year’s Nobel laureate for
literature, delivered a passionate, truthful and courageous acceptance
speech to the Swedish Academy on Wednesday. The renowned author of such
plays as The Homecoming and The Caretaker, Pinter has spoken out
tirelessly and powerfully against the war in Iraq and the depredations
of American imperialism in the Balkans, Central America and elsewhere
that preceded it...

http://www.uruknet.com/?s1=1&p=18582&s2=10

---

Harold Pinter

His official website:
http://www.haroldpinter.org/home/index.shtml

The ailing author's moving and powerful Nobel lecture on Art, Truth and
Politics:
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html
In Swedish:
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-s.html

Here is what Michael Billington, the Guardian's theatre critic wrote
about Pinter's lecture:
"This was a man delivering an attack on American foreign policy, and
Britain's subscription to it, with a controlled anger and a deadly
irony. And, paradoxically, it reminded us why Pinter is such a
formidable dramatist. He used every weapon in his theatrical technique
to reinforce his message. And, by the end, it was as if Pinter himself
had been physically recharged by the moral duty to express his
innermost feelings."
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1661931,00.html

(Source: TFF)

=== 2 ===

--- In yugoslaviainfo @yahoogroups.com, Rick Rozoff wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/357999.stm


BBC News
June 1, 1999


Harold Pinter takes on Nato


One of the UK's most important playwrights, Harold
Pinter has challenged audiences around the world since
his play The Birthday Party first hit London in 1958.
He has become increasingly outspoken about the issues
of the day and now talks to BBC HARDtalk about his
current concerns over the Kosovo crisis.


"This Nato action is not only illegal, immoral, and
also crazy and infantile, it will achieve absolutely
nothing," says Harold Pinter.

The playwright, who describes himself as "a bit of an
old warrior", has been speaking out on human rights
issues since the overthrow of Chile's President
Allende back in the 1970s, and how he is standing his
ground over the crisis in the Balkans.

Angry at Nato's intervention, Pinter claims "the
plight of the Kosovo people is irrelevant to the US
and the UK".

Instead he says the two nations are more interested in
"domination and assertion of power", and are pursuing
a course which will "only agravate the misery and the
horror and devastate the country".

Such outspoken views have seen Pinter attacked by the
British press, but he remains determined to have his
say.

"I live in a very hostile press world because I speak
my mind," he says. "The tradition for artists in
Britain is to shut up and write."

But Pinter feels that as British citizen he has an
"obligation" to speak out about the bombing, "Not as
an artist, but as a man," he adds.
....
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.haroldpinter.org/politics/politics_serbia.shtml


Harold Pinter.org


The Guardian
June 7, 1999
Audrey Gillan


The playwright Harold Pinter told an anti-war
demonstration that he was ashamed to be British
because of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia.

At the gathering of more than 6,000 marchers in a park
next to the Imperial War Museum in London on Saturday,
he described the current peace talks as a sham, and
claimed that the war had been totally unwarranted.

Standing in the shadow of the two l5 inch naval guns
that sit at the entrance to the museum, the playwright
threw his words out like stones, each of them aimed at
the Labour government.

'I am sure those people here today who voted the
Labour party into power share the same feeling - a
deep sense of shame, the shame of being British.

'Little did we think two years ago that we had elected
a government which would take a leading role in what
is essentially a criminal act, showing total contempt
for the United Nations and international law."

Pinter said Britain's leaders had been engaging in
despicable hypocrisy, and he contrasted Tony Blair's
calling the nail bombing of a bar in Old Compton
Street, Soho, "barbaric", with his defending the
cluster bombs dropped on Yugoslavia as "civilization
against barbarism".

These clusterbombs cut children to pieces and this is
an act which takes place 15,000ft 'under 'those brave
bombers. An act which Mr Blair, with his moralistic
Christianity applauds," Pinter said.

"Let us face the truth. The truth is that neither
Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar
Albanians. This action has been yet another blatant
and brutal assertion of US power using Nato as its
missile. It set out to consolidate one thing -
American domination of Europe. This must be fully
recognised and it must be resisted."

The march, which began at the Embankment, had been
organised by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans
before the peace talks began.

The organisers went ahead with the protest because
they said it was 'obscene" that the bombing was
continuing.

Carrying anti-Nato flags, target placards and crosses
with the name of the civilian dead in Serbia and
Kosovo, as well as trade unions, banners, the marchers
chanted anti-war slogans and demanded that money be
spent on welfare rather than warfare.

The march coincided with a number of other anti-war
marches around the world, including one outside the
Pentagon in Washington, which sent messages of
support.

A rally in Glasgow was addressed by the Labour MP for
Linlithgow Tam Dalyell, Alice Mahon the Labour MP for
Halifax, told the London crowd that the real US
objective in the war was the occupation of Yugoslavia,
a country which had "resisted 72 days of criminal
bombardment".

She said that what she had learned was that Nato could
now destroy any country from l0,000ft in the air and
the only way smaller countries could defend themselves
would be to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Committee for Peace in the Balkans intends to
continue its work when the bombing has stopped," she
said. "We are not going to stop until justice is done.



Comment in Socialist Review
June 1999


When the bomb went off in Old Compton Street, Mr Blair
described it as a barbaric act. When cluster bombs go
off in Serbian marketplaces, cutting children into
pieces, we are told that such an act is being taken on
behalf of 'civilisation against barbarism'.

Mr Blair is clearly having a wonderful time. But if
Britain remains America's poodle, she is now a vicious
and demented poodle.

The Nato action is in breach of its own charter and
outside all recognised parameters of international
law. Nato is destroying the infrastructure of a
sovereign state, murdering hundreds of civilians,
creating widespread misery and desolation, and doing
immeasurable damage to the environment.

Underneath the demonisation and the hysteria, there is
an agenda. What is it? It is certainly not what it
purports to be.

Neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the
Kosovan Albanians, despite their tears. This action is
yet another brutal and blatant assertion of US power,
using Nato as its missile.

This "new aggressive" Nato is helping to fulfil one
thing and one thing only-American domination of
Europe. The true danger to world peace is not former
Yugoslavia, but the United States.

--- End forwarded message ---